N Carolina board gets 100s of protest calls over voter data

Published 5:09 pm Saturday, July 8, 2017

RALEIGH — Hundreds of people have called and emailed North Carolina’s elections board complaining about voter information being turned over to a federal commission investigating voter fraud with some even asking to cancel their registration, a spokesman said,

The board is telling people that it is only releasing information that is publicly available and anyone who cancels their registration now will still be in the data turned over to U.S. President Donald Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud, Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement spokesman Patrick Gannon said.

The board has received at least 380 emails this past week, along with hundreds of calls, Gannon said.

“Kindly remove my name from NC voter rolls immediately. Thank you,” one voter wrote Wednesday, adding that the commission “smells funny” and the people in charge could not be trusted, according to The News & Observer of Raleigh.

The board is reminding callers and emailers that it is only turning over information already publicly available, like voter names, party registrations, addresses, and voting histories. It isn’t turning over information it collects to confirm identities, but keeps private, like dates of birth and Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

The board can’t estimate how many people may have canceled their voting registration because that process is handled by individual counties.

“The State Board would strongly discourage anyone from removing themselves from the rolls. The data to be made available to the Commission is publicly available to anyone at ncsbe.gov and has been for many years. This agency is required to provide it under state law,” board executive director Kim Westbrook Strach said in a statement.